


The Roadhouse: A History

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:11:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since it was opened, Harvelle’s Roadhouse has been the go-to place for anyone in the know. Hunters would flock to its walls, because at any other establishment they would be looked at funny. It was the first place of its kind, but certainly not the last. It was the best, though. It was filled with colorful characters and a touch of destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Roadhouse: A History

            Since it was opened, Harvelle’s Roadhouse has been the go-to place for anyone in the know. Hunters would flock to its walls, because at any other establishment they would be looked at funny. It was the first place of its kind, but certainly not the last. It was the best, though. It was filled with colorful characters and a touch of destiny.

            Founded in the winter of 1984 by Ellen and Bill Harvelle, it was originally a place where Ellen could settle down and watch her daughter while making money. The building was a fixer-upper, and by the time it was ready to open, Joanna Beth Harvelle was ready to be born. Ellen’s water broke while Bill was installing the beer tap, and dropped everything to drive his wife to the hospital.

            Jo was born on April the 7th, 1985. Ellen and Bill couldn’t be more proud. Little Joanna had perfect gold hair and tiny fingers and toes, everything was right.

            Bill cut down on hunts during Jo’s first year, choosing instead to put together cases for other hunters and work the bar. The Roadhouse was Jo’s first home. The place that she grew up in. When she was one, her father left for a hunt and Jo tripped on a loose floorboard. Ellen, who was not normally a worrywart, called Bill’s motel number in tears. Jo was fine, and the building silently apologized to the little girl. At least that’s what Ellen liked to think when the whole place groaned.

            As Jo got older, she loved to dart around hunters’ feet and try to sell them things. She’d make lemonade behind the bar and bring it up in paper cups to the people who frequented. Sometimes she’d get a nickel for it, sometimes they wouldn’t pay.   
However, there was one hunter that would always give her dollar bills and tell her to use them for a rainy day. He had boys her age, and would hate to see her potential wasted. Jo would always look up and awe and say, “Thank you Mr. Winchester.” Just like her mother taught her, and dart back behind the bar, giggling all the way.

            The windows would reflect rainbows onto Joanna’s golden hair and she always thought it was the coolest thing. John would call her Rainbow Brite and played on the Pac-Man machines with her. John was her daddy’s best friend, Uncle John she’d call him. She never met her “cousins,” but Jo never questioned it. That’s just the way things were.

            When Jo was ten, Uncle John came back from a hunt with tears in his eyes. “Where’s daddy?” Jo asked, blissfully unaware of what was really going on. John couldn’t look her in the eye and instead went to Ellen. Jo didn’t understand why her mommy was crying until Jo snuck outside and saw her daddy lying in Uncle John’s truck. “Daddy?” She called, not wanting to believe what was in front of her eyes. “Daddy, it’s me.”

            It was a long time before Uncle John came back to the Roadhouse. On Jo’s sixteenth birthday, he showed up with a card and a few rock salt rounds. He told her to protect herself, but go to school. She was worth it. In the visits after that, Jo developed somewhat of a crush on John. It was little-girly and stupid, but it meant something to her. She felt that he understood her, but then again, didn’t every girl?

            Jo quit school at nineteen and went back to the Roadhouse. She couldn’t take people’s whispers about the “Freak with the knife” any longer. The Roadhouse had her friends, her family. Like, Ash. Ash was like an older brother to her and he worried about her like a little sister. Ash showed up during Jo’s absence and begged Ellen to give him a job. He had recently dropped out of MIT and he needed a place to park his things and maybe make a bit of cash. Ellen hesitated at first, but when Ash proved to be good at putting together paranormal cases, she let him join the crew. However, she did not condone him sleeping on the pool table after long nights of drinking and demon tracking. “You have a room for a reason,” she’d say, “Use it.”

            When Jo came back from school, she and Ash instantly clicked. He would protect her from the handsy hunters in the bar (Or rather push them out after she’d punched them.) and they’d talk about how college is overrated and make fun of some of the hunters in the bar. She’d kick his ass at pool and video games, even when he tried his hardest. After a while, she started letting him win.

            That was when John Winchester returned. He disguised himself at first, wearing a baseball cap and a trench coat… but it was him. Older and more tired, but it was him. The day after he arrived, a girl who was dressed remarkably like Carmen Sandiego made her way into the bar. She sat in a corner, seemingly trying a bit too hard to be hidden. “Jo, watch that one. Something’s not right with her.” Ellen said to her daughter. Jo nodded and grabbed her rag and a bowl of peanuts to scout out the odd patron. The blonde made her way to the table and slid in the seat across from the girl while she wasn’t looking.

            “Who’ya hiding from?” Jo asked the stranger, who looked up at her from under the brim of her hat. “You’re not exactly hiding very well.” The girl in front of her scowled and removed her hat to reveal her face. She seemed about Jo’s age, maybe a bit older, especially around the eyes.

            “I’m inconspicuous!” The girl whispered angrily before glancing sideways at John Winchester.

            “Yeah. If you were in a circus.” Jo caught the girl eyeing John and raised an eyebrow. “John Winchester, eh? I didn’t know he had groupies.”

            “Shh.” The girl snapped. “He has something I need and I don’t want him knowing I’m here.” The girl had an English accent, but Jo couldn’t tell if it was real or fake. “Do you know him?”

            “A bit. I’m Jo.”

            “Call me Bela. Just don’t let him know.” And with that, Bela slipped her hat back on and looked down at a magazine. Jo nodded and looked down at her hands, inspecting every crack in her nail polish, every scar on her palms and every hangnail. She had nothing better to do. And every so often she’d glance back up at John, even though she knew Bela would probably get angry with her for it. After ten minutes of silence, Bela looked up from her tabloid with somewhat of an annoyed expression. “You fancy him or something? Bit old for you.”

            “He’s a bit old for you too. What are you doing chasing after him? What does he have that you so desperately need that can’t be asked for.” Jo paused to take another look at Bela, the girl in the red coat and hat. “You’re a thief.”

            The last part of Jo’s words were cut off by Bela’s hand slapping over Jo’s mouth. “Shut it, Jo!” Bela hissed as Jo struggled under Bela’s grasp. The two scuffled and fell to the ground, Bela’s hat flying a few feet away from her, and looking right at John Winchester. Bela Talbot was young, not yet skilled or suave with her craft. She was barely nineteen but looked a bit older. She still had a lot to learn from her demonic teachers—but that is a story best told by another building.

            “What are you doing?” Jo asked Bela as her head hit the stool. “You call yourself a thief? Because this is sort of ridiculous.”

            “Tonight. After closing. Meet me, alright?” Bela said before scuttling out the door and leaving Joanna Beth very confused. The blonde got up and made her way back to the counter where her mother was standing with a puzzled expression.

            “What was that about?”

            “No idea.”

            Bela met Jo at the back door after closing, after a long conversation with Ash. The horrid red coat and hat were gone, and Bela seemed a bit more vulnerable in her skirt and top. For someone who had the thought to wear the coat combination, Jo had to say that the girl was very polished. Her hair was perfect, her shoes expensive, and there wasn’t a chip to be seen on her nails. There was no doubt in Jo’s mind that the girl came from money, but whether or not she’d be snooty about it was up in air. She did carry herself like an aristocrat, but something about her seemed fake. Jo just couldn’t put her finger on it.

            “You haven’t told John Winchester about me, have you?” Bela asked. There was no ‘Hello’ or ‘How are you?’ It was always business with her. In, out, done. Jo looked surprised, but realized she shouldn’t be. She should stop expecting more of people.

            “No. Your secret’s safe. What do you even want from him, Bela?” Jo put her rag down on the counter and sighed. “What’s so important that you have to steal from him?”

            “Something that’ll save my arse.” Bela spat. “You don’t know anything about me, Joanna.”

            “Really? I had Ash run your prints, and I found some pretty interesting things about you, Miss Talbot.” Jo was bluffing, but after all those years of working in a bar and playing cards, she knew she had a pretty good poker face. “So, don’t play that.”

            “Whatever you think, they got what was coming to them. Now, I promise I won’t do anything to harm your precious John. He actually seems like a good person.” Bela slapped a twenty on the table and gave Jo a light kiss on the cheek. “I’ll keep my hands off of him if you keep my secret. Good night.” They made eye contact, and Bela scurried out of the bar without another word.

            The next morning, Bela reentered the Roadhouse without the red getup. She smiled and sat down at John Winchester’s table, which irked Jo a bit, but she didn’t think too much of it. After all, they were just talking. Jo finished drying the glass in her hand and when she looked up, the two were gone.  _That’s funny…_

            When the two left the table, they made their way to the back room. Bela was swinging her hips and looking back with flirty glances, making no mistake as to what she wanted from him. While Bela was barely the same age as his Sammy, he was horny, and the way she smiled at him drove him mad. He grabbed her around the waist and slammed her into the wall of the old building, which creaked in return. “John, John…” Bela cried out, “Take me right here, right now.” He didn’t waste much time with foreplay or precautions, he just pulled down her panties and unzipped his pants. “Right against this goddamn wall, John.” He didn’t think it odd when she slipped her hands into his jacket, just as she didn’t think it odd when he hoisted her up and wrapped her legs around his torso. Over and over, she called his name. Over and over, her head rubbed against the splintering wall. “John, John,  _John_!”

            It didn’t take Jo long to make her way down the hallway and past the door to the back room. It was cracked just a bit, and it seemed as if voices were coming from behind it. They were muffled and short, so it didn’t seem much like a conversation, but Jo didn’t think twice about bursting in to break up the party. When she saw Bela pressed hot and lustful against John, her jaw dropped and she tried to run out as quickly as she could without the two noticing.

            Things didn’t exactly go as planned, and Bela and John caught sight of the intruder before Jo yelled, “You  _bitch_!” and slammed the door behind her.

            The next day, Bela dared to show her face around the Roadhouse again, even though all of the hunters most likely knew what went down the day before. Many of them were propositioning her for a quick tumble in the coat closet, much to Bela’s disgust. The talisman she stole from John had already been sold, so she figured that it would be safe, but nothing ever was. “You. Got the nerve to come back, I see.” Jo snapped while coming around her table to wipe up. “So, the other night? That meant nothing?”

            “Joanna… Did you honestly think that it would ever mean anything?” Bela got up and turned around, running right into John Winchester. It couldn’t have been scripted, the look on Bela’s face as John pressed his pistol to her forehead.

            “You took something from me, Bela. I don’t like it when people take things out of my pockets. Slippery little thief you are, though… a little young. I’m assuming you don’t have what I need… but that’s because you’re not the only one good with disguises, Miss Talbot.” The girl’s eyes widened as John pulled the talisman out of his pocket and smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Bela. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

            “I don’t…”

            “Save it.” John said, cutting her off. Slamming the object down on the table, he removed the gun from her forehead and motioned for her to grab it. “You’ll need this a lot more than I will. How long?”

            “F..five. I’ll go now.” After grabbing the talisman, she immediately left, and everything resumed to normal.

            “What was that all about?” Ash asked as he walked by Jo, carrying a pool cue. “That the girl you busted in the broom closet with Winchester?” He mussed her hair and gave her a small, brotherly hug. “There’s something not right about her. Table three’s a bit messy, Joey.”

            “Yeah, yeah.”

            Four years later, Sam and Dean Winchester visited the Roadhouse for the first time. They swept Jo away, much to Ellen’s discontent, and showed her how to hunt. It was one case, but that one case led to Jo running away to hunt. Business dwindled, as Ellen’s fits of rage were numerous and frequent, and there was only so much verbal abuse that the old men could take.

            One day, Ellen ran out of pretzels, so she commanded Ash to hold down the fort while she ran to the store to get some. That was when the demons came, swirling in fire and charring the old wood like it was nothing. The hunters tried to get out, but the windows wouldn’t break, the doors wouldn’t open, and the sound of wood charring wasn’t enough to drown out the screams.

            When Ellen returned and found her beloved Roadhouse burned to the ground, and Ash’s body in the cinders, she immediately turned back. Everyone was gone.

The first in a long line of loss.


End file.
